You Can Learn Anything You Want to Learn - Part III

You Can Learn Anything You Want to Learn

If You Are Willing to Learn – Part III

Open-mindedness allows a student to build a firm methodological, critical, systematic and analytical foundation in any field.  You will able to read the main literature of your discipline and construct a theoretical paradigm which you can apply pragmatically in your profession.  Surveying the canonical writings of your field exposes you to the origins, ascension, shifts and decline of various schools of thought as your field evolves.  You see the limitations in thinking of prior generations.  As market forces demanded changes, some schools of thought were necessarily dismantled.  Whatever paradigm that you assemble will inevitably shatter beneath the sledgehammer of research, novel hypotheses and market trends.  An open mind is essential to ongoing achievement and success as nothing remains static.  I hasten to add this process is relative in every field.  The “shade tree” mechanic quickly becomes a dinosaur if he refuses to remain open to new developments in automobile design, engineering and manufacturing.  Again, it is simply amazing what a person can learn if he keeps an open mind.

If you have a mental and emotional block about a subject, you will not be able to learn and achieve proficiency in it.  The use of standardized testing in the United States is a complex and challenging issue.  Its history is fraught with racial, gender, class, ethnic, cultural and linguistic biases.  An extensive body of literature explores this complicated issue in American higher education.  Analyzing that history exceeds the scope of this column.  Nevertheless, my opposition to these tests and an excessive reliance upon them which negates more dependable criteria to determine an applicant’s admissibility prevented me from attaining a good score.  Test preparation and study were useless as I fomented silently about the fruitless nature of this test.  As I prepared for these tests as an adult with multiple graduate degrees and a decade and a half of professional experience, I reasoned the tests were non-applicable.  My disdained reached a feverish pitch between my ears.  “These people have me studying for a child’s test!”  My anger and resentment boiled over thereby hindering my ability to do well on the test.  The mental and emotional resistance that I formed against this test and its importance in my application equated with the rock of Gibraltar.  By the grace of God, a confluence of favorable experiences and a few epiphanies, I was able to surmount that formidable mental block.  I learned from the criticism that I had of my students.  I was not facing a challenge of aptitude.  I also had to apply myself and earn an admissible score on the exam.  No admission professionals would waive this requirement.  Each applicant had to take the test.  So, I had to become calm and prepare to succeed on the exam.  I possess the intelligence.  My fierce mental and emotional opposition made an admissible score an impossibility.  Once I accepted the obvious and non-negotiable dimensions of the process, I began to do better on practice tests.  It was necessary that I irreversibly discard my anger and resentment about having to take the test. 

If you are having difficulty learning anything, I encourage you to consider whether you have a silent and unconscious mental block.  You cannot learn anything if you have any mental resistance.  Do you think it should be easier?  Do you find some of the learning steps to be an imposition? Is it too time-consuming?  Are their requirements that you rebuff?  I recall working in educational administration when the college made an irreversible decision to incorporate technology into all dimensions of daily operations.  Resistant to making this change and having to learn word processing, email and other programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SPSS, several workers elected to retire.  They refused to learn the technology and software.  They had blocks against this new information and procedures.  Had these people kept an open mind, they would have discovered how efficient and more productive the computerized working environment would become.  Their refusal to entertain the idea of doing anything differently prevented them from progressing professionally.  I have a lingering hunch that they experienced a similar atrophy in their personal lives.  Had they been willing to erase the canvass of prior experience and willingly embrace a new way of working, possible promotions, salary increases and change in jobs awaited them.  Regrettably, new experiences, mysteries and joys eluded them as they insisted, “We’ve always done it this way.  It works and there is no need to change after all of these years.”